Israel, the United States’ closest ally in the Middle East, once enjoyed wide bipartisan support among Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress, but that era of goodwill has virtually vanished, much to Israel’s detriment.
Israel’s special relationship with the United States in the past few decades has rested on a foundation of bipartisanship and broad public sympathy toward Jewish statehood. This spirit translated into widespread support for Israel within the American political system. But now, it is coming under considerable stress.
The erosion is particularly evident within the ranks of the Democratic Party, which has been gradually drifting away from Israel.
One of the Democrats driving this transformation, Bernie Sanders, is Jewish. The progressive U.S. senator from Vermont has been critical of Israeli policies in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
Last month, in a stark illustration of this historic shift, Sanders sponsored two resolutions calling for the cancellation of the sale of offensive U.S. military hardware to Israel.
Forty out of 47 Democrats in the Senate voted in favor of his resolution to block a $295 million sale of bulldozers. Two of Sanders’ supporters, Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, are Jewish. Along with Sanders, they argued that this machinery would be used to demolish Arab residential buildings in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon.
Fifty nine senators, mostly Republicans, voted against the motion. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was one of seven Democrats who aligned themselves with the Republicans.
Thirty six Democrats supported Sanders’ second resolution, which was aimed at blocking a $152 million sale of 1,000-pound bombs to Israel. They objected to it on the grounds that such bombs would liked be used in Gaza and Lebanon. Sixty three senators voted against the resolution.
Similar resolutions were proposed by Sanders in 2024 and 2025, but they were rejected by the Senate as well. In 2024, 19 Democrats voted with Sanders to deny Israel military aid. Last year, the number jumped to 24, in a vivid indication of the incremental Democratic swing away from Israel.
Earlier in April, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a vocal critic of Israel who has accused the Israeli armed forces of committing genocide in Gaza, announced that she would vote against all U.S. military assistance to Israel, including defensive weapons.
Speaking at a forum of the anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America, she said that Israel has violated the Leahy amendment, which prohibits the sale of weapons to countries guilty of human rights violations. Last year, however, she voted against an amendment to withdraw funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defence system.
Recently, in another sign that Democrats are increasingly disenchanted with Israel, Rahm Emanuel, a Jew, said that U.S. military aid to Israel is unnecessary. Formerly President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and the mayor of Chicago, he is widely seen as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2028. He believes that Israel should purchase U.S. weapons on exactly the same terms as other American allies. As he put it, “The days of taxpayers subsidizing Israel militarily, that’s over … Israel is a very wealthy nation.”
There are additional signs that Democrats have adopted a critical position on Israel.
Obama recently appeared in photographs with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an avowed anti-Zionist. The Democrats’ newest congresswoman, Analilia Mejia of New Jersey, posted a social media condemnation of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel, but she omitted to mention the Israeli victims.
The front-runner in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary, Graham Platner, praised Hamas military tactics during its war with Israel in 2014: “From a strictly professional standpoint, this was a damn fine looking and successful raid against a superior opponent,” he wrote.“I dig it.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren, an ally of Sanders, has joined Platner on the campaign trail.
Kamala Harris, the vice president in President Joe Biden’s one-term Democratic administration, blamed Israel for dragging the United States into a war with Iran. President Donald Trump “got pulled into it by Bibi Netanyahu, let’s be clear about that,” she said. During the 2024 campaign, she refused to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in public.
The Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has said he never has and never will accept money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a major pro-Israel organization.
Abdul El-Sayed, an anti-Israel physician contesting Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, has been endorsed by Sanders and Hasan Piker, a controversial social media figure. In a biting reference to Israel, Piker wrote, “Hamas is a thousand times better than a fascist settler colonial apartheid state.”
The anti-Israel trend among some Democrats today is such that the Jewish celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a long-time Democrat, recently left the party and registered with the Republicans.
This tectonic shift is driven, in part, by Muslim members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib, an ethnic Palestinian whose family hails from the West Bank, and Ilhan Omar, a Somali American.
Amid these developments, antisemitism is on the rise in the United States.
Acts of physical violence against Jewish Americans reached record levels in 2025, even as the number of antisemitic incidents declined, according to an annual report published by the Anti-Defamation League on May 6.
While the total number of recorded incidents fell 33 percent to 6,274, the number of violent incidents rose 4 percent and included Jewish fatalities for the first time since 2019. At least 300 Jews were targeted in violent attacks in 2025. Three persons were killed — two in a shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. and one in a firebombing at a rally for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado.
What seems clear is that manifestations of antisemitism in the United States are merging with an animus or hatred of Israel and Zionism. This trend will be a source of alarm to both American Jews and Israel.